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<title>The Devil&#8217;s Dictionary: L</title>
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<h1>L</h1>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">labor</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> One of
the processes by which A acquires property for B.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">land</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A part of
the earth’s surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property
subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society,
and is eminently worthy of the superstructure. Carried to its logical
conclusion, it means that some have the right to prevent others from living;
for the right to own implies the right exclusively to occupy; and in fact laws
of trespass are enacted wherever property in land is recognized. It follows
that if the whole area of <i>terra firma</i>
is owned by A, B and C, there will be no place for D, E, F and G to be born,
or, born as trespassers, to exist.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">A life on the ocean wave,</p>
<p class="poetry">A home on the rolling deep,</p>
<p class="poetry">For the spark the nature gave</p>
<p class="poetry">I have there the right to keep.</p>
<p class="poetry">They give me the cat-o’-nine</p>
<p class="poetry">Whenever I go ashore.</p>
<p class="poetry">Then ho! for the flashing brine—</p>
<p class="poetry">I’m a natural commodore!</p>
<p class="citeauth">Dodle</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">language</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The
music with which we charm the serpents guarding another’s treasure.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">Laocoon</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A
famous piece of antique scripture representing a priest of that name and his
two sons in the folds of two enormous serpents. The skill and diligence with
which the old man and lads support the serpents and keep them up to their work
have been justly regarded as one of the noblest artistic illustrations of the
mastery of human intelligence over brute inertia.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">lap</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> One of the
most important organs of the female system—an admirable provision of nature for
the repose of infancy, but chiefly useful in rural festivities to support
plates of cold chicken and heads of adult males. The male of our species has a
rudimentary lap, imperfectly developed and in no way contributing to the
animal’s substantial welfare.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">last</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A
shoemaker’s implement, named by a frowning Providence as opportunity to the
maker of puns.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">Ah, punster, would my lot were cast,</p>
<p class="poetry">Where the cobbler is unknown,</p>
<p class="poetry">So that I might forget his last</p>
<p class="poetry">And hear your own.</p>
<p class="citeauth">Gargo Repsky</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">laughter</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> An
interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by
inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable. Liability
to attacks of laughter is one of the characteristics distinguishing man from
the animals—these being not only inaccessible to the provocation of his
example, but impregnable to the microbes having original jurisdiction in
bestowal of the disease. Whether laughter could be imparted to animals by
inoculation from the human patient is a question that has not been answered by
experimentation. Dr. Meir Witchell holds that the infection character of
laughter is due to the instantaneous fermentation of <i>sputa</i> diffused in a spray. From this peculiarity he names
the disorder <i>Convulsio spargens</i>.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">laureate</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span> Crowned
with leaves of the laurel. In England the Poet Laureate is an officer of the
sovereign’s court, acting as dancing skeleton at every royal feast and
singing-mute at every royal funeral. Of all incumbents of that high office,
Robert Southey had the most notable knack at drugging the Samson of public joy
and cutting his hair to the quick; and he had an artistic color-sense which
enabled him so to blacken a public grief as to give it the aspect of a national
crime.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">laurel</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The <i>laurus</i>, a vegetable dedicated to Apollo,
and formerly defoliated to wreathe the brows of victors and such poets as had
influence at court. (<i>Vide supra.</i>)</p>

<p id="law" class="entry"><span class="def">law</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span></p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">Once Law was sitting on the bench,</p>
<p class="poetry">And Mercy knelt a-weeping.</p>
<p class="poetry">“Clear out!” he cried, “disordered wench!</p>
<p class="poetry">Nor come before me creeping.</p>
<p class="poetry">Upon your knees if you appear,</p>
<p class="poetry">‘Tis plain your have no standing here.”</p>
<p class="poetry">Then Justice came. His Honor cried:</p>
<p class="poetry">“<i>Your</i> status?&#8212;devil seize you!”</p>
<p class="poetry">“<i>Amica curiae,</i>” she replied—</p>
<p class="poetry">“Friend of the court, so please you.”</p>
<p class="poetry">“Begone!” he shouted—“there’s the door—</p>
<p class="poetry">I never saw your face before!”</p>
<p class="citeauth">G. J.</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">lawful</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span> Compatible
with the will of a judge having jurisdiction.</p>

<p id="lawyer" class="entry"><span class="def">lawyer</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> One
skilled in circumvention of the law.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">laziness</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> Unwarranted
repose of manner in a person of low degree.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">lead</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A heavy
blue-gray metal much used in giving stability to light lovers—particularly to
those who love not wisely but other men’s wives. Lead is also of great service
as a counterpoise to an argument of such weight that it turns the scale of
debate the wrong way. An interesting fact in the chemistry of international
controversy is that at the point of contact of two patriotisms lead is
precipitated in great quantities.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">Hail, holy Lead!&#8212;of human feuds the great</p>
<p class="poetry">And universal arbiter; endowed</p>
<p class="poetry">With penetration to pierce any cloud</p>
<p class="poetry">Fogging the field of controversial hate,</p>
<p class="poetry">And with a sift, inevitable, straight,</p>
<p class="poetry">Searching precision find the unavowed</p>
<p class="poetry">But vital point. Thy judgment, when allowed</p>
<p class="poetry">By the chirurgeon, settles the debate.</p>
<p class="poetry">O useful metal!&#8212;were it not for thee</p>
<p class="poetry">We’d grapple one another’s ears alway:</p>
<p class="poetry">But when we hear thee buzzing like a bee</p>
<p class="poetry">We, like old Muhlenberg, “care not to stay.”</p>
<p class="poetry">And when the quick have run away like pellets</p>
<p class="poetry">Jack Satan smelts the dead to make new bullets.</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">learning</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The
kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">lecturer</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> One
with his hand in your pocket, his tongue in your ear and his faith in your patience.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">legacy</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A gift
from one who is legging it out of this vale of tears.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">leonine</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span> Unlike
a menagerie lion. Leonine verses are those in which a word in the middle of a
line rhymes with a word at the end, as in this famous passage from Bella Peeler Silcox:</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">The electric light invades the dunnest deep of Hades.</p>
<p class="poetry">Cries Pluto, ‘twixt his snores: “O tempora! O mores!”</p>
<p class="poetry">It should be explained that Mrs. Silcox does not undertake to teach pronunciation of the
Greek and Latin tongues. Leonine verses are so called in honor of a poet named
Leo, whom prosodists appear to find a pleasure in believing to have been the
first to discover that a rhyming couplet could be run into a single line.</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">lettuce</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> An
herb of the genus <i>Lactuca</i>, “Wherewith,” says that pious gastronome, Hengist Pelly, “God has been pleased
to reward the good and punish the wicked. For by his inner light the righteous
man has discerned a manner of compounding for it a dressing to the appetency
whereof a multitude of gustible condiments conspire, being reconciled and
ameliorated with profusion of oil, the entire comestible making glad the heart
of the godly and causing his face to shine. But the person of spiritual unworth
is successfully tempted to the Adversary to eat of lettuce with destitution of
oil, mustard, egg, salt and garlic, and with a rascal bath of vinegar polluted
with sugar. Wherefore the person of spiritual unworth suffers an intestinal
pang of strange complexity and raises the song.”</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">leviathan</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> An
enormous aquatic animal mentioned by Job. Some suppose it to have been the
whale, but that distinguished ichthyologer, Dr. Jordan, of Stanford University,
maintains with considerable heat that it was a species of gigantic Tadpole
(<i>Thaddeus Polandensis</i>) or Polliwig&#8212;<i>Maria
pseudo-hirsuta</i>. For an exhaustive description and history of the
Tadpole consult the famous monograph of Jane Potter, <i>Thaddeus of Warsaw</i>.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">lexicographer</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A
pestilent fellow who, under the pretense of recording some particular stage in
the development of a language, does what he can to arrest its growth, stiffen
its flexibility and mechanize its methods. For your lexicographer, having
written his dictionary, comes to be considered “as one having authority,”
whereas his function is only to make a record, not to give a law. The natural
servility of the human understanding having invested him with judicial power,
surrenders its right of reason and submits itself to a chronicle as if it were
a statue. Let the dictionary (for example) mark a good word as “obsolete” or
“obsolescent” and few men thereafter venture to use it, whatever their need of
it and however desirable its restoration to favor—whereby the process of
improverishment is accelerated and speech decays. On the contrary, recognizing
the truth that language must grow by innovation if it grow at all, makes new
words and uses the old in an unfamiliar sense, has no following and is tartly
reminded that “it isn’t in the dictionary”&#8212;although down to the time of the
first lexicographer (Heaven forgive him!) no author ever had used a word that <i>was</i> in the dictionary. In the golden prime
and high noon of English speech; when from the lips of the great Elizabethans
fell words that made their own meaning and carried it in their very sound; when
a Shakespeare and a Bacon were possible, and the language now rapidly perishing
at one end and slowly renewed at the other was in vigorous growth and hardy
preservation—sweeter than honey and stronger than a lion—the lexicographer was
a person unknown, the dictionary a creation which his Creator had not created
him to create.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">God said: “Let Spirit perish into Form,”</p>
<p class="poetry">And lexicographers arose, a swarm!</p>
<p class="poetry">Thought fled and left her clothing, which they took,</p>
<p class="poetry">And catalogued each garment in a book.</p>
<p class="poetry">Now, from her leafy covert when she cries:</p>
<p class="poetry">“Give me my clothes and I’ll return,” they rise</p>
<p class="poetry">And scan the list, and say without compassion:</p>
<p class="poetry">“Excuse us—they are mostly out of fashion.”</p>
<p class="citeauth">Sigismund Smith</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">liar</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A lawyer
with a roving commission.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">liberty</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> One of
Imagination’s most precious possessions.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">The rising People, hot and out of breath,</p>
<p class="poetry">Roared around the palace: “Liberty or death!”</p>
<p class="poetry">“If death will do,” the King said, “let me reign;</p>
<p class="poetry">You’ll have, I’m sure, no reason to complain.”</p>
<p class="citeauth">Martha Braymance</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">lickspittle</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A
useful functionary, not infrequently found editing a newspaper. In his
character of editor he is closely allied to the blackmailer by the tie of
occasional identity; for in truth the lickspittle is only the blackmailer under
another aspect, although the latter is frequently found as an independent
species. Lickspittling is more detestable than blackmailing, precisely as the
business of a confidence man is more detestable than that of a highway robber;
and the parallel maintains itself throughout, for whereas few robbers will
cheat, every sneak will plunder if he dare.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">life</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A
spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay. We live in daily apprehension
of its loss; yet when lost it is not missed. The question, “Is life worth
living?” has been much discussed; particularly by those who think it is not,
many of whom have written at great length in support of their view and by
careful observance of the laws of health enjoyed for long terms of years the
honors of successful controversy.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">“Life’s not worth living, and that’s the truth,”</p>
<p class="poetry">Carelessly caroled the golden youth.</p>
<p class="poetry">In manhood still he maintained that view</p>
<p class="poetry">And held it more strongly the older he grew.</p>
<p class="poetry">When kicked by a jackass at eighty-three,</p>
<p class="poetry">“Go fetch me a surgeon at once!” cried he.</p>
<p class="citeauth">Han Soper</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">lighthouse</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A
tall building on the seashore in which the government maintains a lamp and the friend of a politician.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">limb</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The
branch of a tree or the leg of an American woman.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">‘Twas a pair of boots that the lady bought,</p>
<p class="poetry">And the salesman laced them tight</p>
<p class="poetry">To a very remarkable height—</p>
<p class="poetry">Higher, indeed, than I think he ought—</p>
<p class="poetry">Higher than <i>can</i> be right.</p>
<p class="poetry">For the Bible declares—but never mind:</p>
<p class="poetry">It is hardly fit</p>
<p class="poetry">To censure freely and fault to find</p>
<p class="poetry">With others for sins that I’m not inclined</p>
<p class="poetry">Myself to commit.</p>
<p class="poetry">Each has his weakness, and though my own</p>
<p class="poetry">Is freedom from every sin,</p>
<p class="poetry">It still were unfair to pitch in,</p>
<p class="poetry">Discharging the first censorious stone.</p>
<p class="poetry">Besides, the truth compels me to say,</p>
<p class="poetry">The boots in question were <i>made</i> that way.</p>
<p class="poetry">As he drew the lace she made a grimace,</p>
<p class="poetry">And blushingly said to him:</p>
<p class="poetry">“This boot, I’m sure, is too high to endure, It hurts my—hurts my—limb.”</p>
<p class="poetry">The salesman smiled in a manner mild,</p>
<p class="poetry">Like an artless, undesigning child;</p>
<p class="poetry">Then, checking himself, to his face he gave</p>
<p class="poetry">A look as sorrowful as the grave,</p>
<p class="poetry">Though he didn’t care two figs</p>
<p class="poetry">For her paints and throes,</p>
<p class="poetry">As he stroked her toes,</p>
<p class="poetry">Remarking with speech and manner just</p>
<p class="poetry">Befitting his calling: “Madam, I trust</p>
<p class="poetry">That it doesn’t hurt your twigs.”</p>
<p class="citeauth">B. Percival Dike</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">linen</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> “A kind
of cloth the making of which, when made of hemp, entails a great waste of
hemp.”—Calcraft the Hangman.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">litigant</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A
person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">litigation</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A
machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">liver</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A large
red organ thoughtfully provided by nature to be bilious with. The sentiments
and emotions which every literary anatomist now knows to haunt the heart were
anciently believed to infest the liver; and even Gascoygne, speaking of the
emotional side of human nature, calls it “our hepaticall parte.” It was at one
time considered the seat of life; hence its name—liver, the thing we live with.
The liver is heaven’s best gift to the goose; without it that bird would be
unable to supply us with the Strasbourg <i>pate</i>.</p>

<p>LL.D. Letters indicating the degree <i>Legumptionorum Doctor</i>,
one learned in laws, gifted with legal gumption. Some suspicion is cast upon
this derivation by the fact that the title was formerly <i>LL.d.</i>, and conferred only upon gentlemen
distinguished for their wealth. At the date of this writing Columbia University
is considering the expediency of making another degree for clergymen, in place
of the old D.D.&#8212;<i>Damnator Diaboli</i>.
The new honor will be known as <i>Sanctorum Custus</i>, and written <i>$$c</i>. The name of the Rev. John Satan has
been suggested as a suitable recipient by a lover of consistency, who points
out that Professor Harry Thurston Peck has long enjoyed the advantage of a
degree.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">lock-and-key</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The
distinguishing device of civilization and enlightenment.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">Lodger</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A less
popular name for the Second Person of that delectable newspaper Trinity, the
Roomer, the Bedder, and the Mealer.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">logic</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The art
of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and
incapacities of the human misunderstanding. The basic of logic is the
syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion—thus:</p>

<p><i>Major Premise</i>: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man.</p>

<p><i>Minor Premise</i>: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds; therefore—</p>

<p><i>Conclusion</i>: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.</p>

<p>This may be called the syllogism arithmetical, in which, by combining logic and mathematics, we
obtain a double certainty and are twice blessed.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">logomachy</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A
war in which the weapons are words and the wounds punctures in the swim-bladder
of self-esteem—a kind of contest in which, the vanquished being unconscious of
defeat, the victor is denied the reward of success.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">‘Tis said by divers of the scholar-men That poor Salmasius died of Milton’s pen.</p>
<p class="poetry">Alas! we cannot know if this is true,</p>
<p class="poetry">For reading Milton’s wit we perish too.</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">loganimity</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The
disposition to endure injury with meek forbearance while maturing a plan of revenge.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">longevity</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> Uncommon
extension of the fear of death.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">looking-glass</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A
vitreous plane upon which to display a fleeting show for man’s disillusion given.</p>

<p class="cite">The King of
Manchuria had a magic looking-glass, whereon whoso looked saw, not his own
image, but only that of the king. A certain courtier who had long enjoyed the
king’s favor and was thereby enriched beyond any other subject of the realm,
said to the king: </p>

<p class="cite">“Give me, I pray,
thy wonderful mirror, so that when absent out of thine august presence I may
yet do homage before thy visible shadow, prostrating myself night and morning
in the glory of thy benign countenance, as which nothing has so divine
splendor, O Noonday Sun of the Universe!”</p>

<p class="cite">Please with the
speech, the king commanded that the mirror be conveyed to the courtier’s
palace; but after, having gone thither without apprisal, he found it in an
apartment where was naught but idle lumber. And the mirror was dimmed with dust
and overlaced with cobwebs. This so angered him that he fisted it hard,
shattering the glass, and was sorely hurt. Enraged all the more by this
mischance, he commanded that the ungrateful courtier be thrown into prison, and
that the glass be repaired and taken back to his own palace; and this was done.
But when the king looked again on the mirror he saw not his image as before,
but only the figure of a crowned ass, having a bloody bandage on one of its
hinder hooves—as the artificers and all who had looked upon it had before
discerned but feared to report. Taught wisdom and charity, the king restored
his courtier to liberty, had the mirror set into the back of the throne and
reigned many years with justice and humility; and one day when he fell asleep
in death while on the throne, the whole court saw in the mirror the luminous
figure of an angel, which remains to this day.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">loquacity</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A
disorder which renders the sufferer unable to curb his tongue when you wish to
talk.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">lord</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> In
American society, an English tourist above the state of a costermonger, as,
lord ‘Aberdasher, Lord Hartisan and so forth. The traveling Briton of lesser
degree is addressed as “Sir,” as, Sir ‘Arry Donkiboi, or ‘Amstead ‘Eath. The
word “Lord” is sometimes used, also, as a title of the Supreme Being; but this
is thought to be rather flattery than true reverence.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">Miss Sallie Ann Splurge, of her own accord,<br />
Wedded a wandering English lord—</p>
<p class="poetry">Wedded and took him to dwell with her “paw,”<br />
A parent who throve by the practice of Draw.</p>
<p class="poetry">Lord Cadde I don’t hesitate to declare</p>
<p class="poetry">Unworthy the father-in-legal care</p>
<p class="poetry">Of that elderly sport, notwithstanding the truth<br />
That Cadde had renounced all the follies of youth;</p>
<p class="poetry">For, sad to relate, he’d arrived at the stage<br />
Of existence that’s marked by the vices of age.<br />
Among them, cupidity caused him to urge<br />
Repeated demands on the pocket of Splurge,<br />
Till, wrecked in his fortune, that gentleman saw<br />
Inadequate aid in the practice of Draw,<br />
And took, as a means of augmenting his pelf,<br />
To the business of being a lord himself.</p>
<p class="poetry">His neat-fitting garments he wilfully shed<br />
And sacked himself strangely in checks instead;</p>
<p class="poetry">Denuded his chin, but retained at each ear<br />
A whisker that looked like a blasted career.<br />
He painted his neck an incarnadine hue<br />
Each morning and varnished it all that he knew.</p>
<p class="poetry">The moony monocular set in his eye</p>
<p class="poetry">Appeared to be scanning the Sweet Bye-and-Bye.<br />
His head was enroofed with a billycock hat, And
his low-necked shoes were aduncous and flat.</p>
<p class="poetry">In speech he eschewed his American ways,</p>
<p class="poetry">Denying his nose to the use of his A’s</p>
<p class="poetry">And dulling their edge till the delicate sense<br />
Of a babe at their temper could take no offence.<br />
His H’s—‘twas most inexpressibly sweet,<br />
The patter they made as they fell at his feet!</p>
<p class="poetry">Re-outfitted thus, Mr. Splurge without fear</p>
<p class="poetry">Began as Lord Splurge his recouping career.</p>
<p class="poetry">Alas, the Divinity shaping his end</p>
<p class="poetry">Entertained other views and decided to send</p>
<p class="poetry">His lordship in horror, despair and dismay</p>
<p class="poetry">From the land of the nobleman’s natural prey.</p>
<p class="poetry">For, smit with his Old World ways,</p>
<p class="poetry">Lady Cadde Fell—suffering Caesar!&#8212;in love with her dad!</p>
<p class="citeauth">G. J.</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">lore</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> Learning—particularly
that sort which is not derived from a regular course of instruction but comes
of the reading of occult books, or by nature. This latter is commonly
designated as folk-lore and embraces popularly myths and superstitions. In
Baring-Gould’s <i>Curious Myths of the Middle
Ages</i> the reader will find many of these traced backward, through
various people son converging lines, toward a common origin in remote
antiquity. Among these are the fables of “Teddy the Giant Killer,” “The
Sleeping John Sharp Williams,” “Little Red Riding Hood and the Sugar Trust,”
“Beauty and the Brisbane,” “The Seven Aldermen of Ephesus,” “Rip Van
Fairbanks,” and so forth. The fable with Goethe so affectingly relates under
the title of “The Erl- King” was known two thousand years ago in Greece as “The
Demos and the Infant Industry.” One of the most general and ancient of these
myths is that Arabian tale of “Ali Baba and the Forty Rockefellers.”</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">loss</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> Privation
of that which we had, or had not. Thus, in the latter sense, it is said of a
defeated candidate that he “lost his election”; and of that eminent man, the
poet Gilder, that he has “lost his mind.” It is in the former and more
legitimate sense, that the word is used in the famous epitaph:</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">Here Huntington’s ashes long have lain</p>
<p class="poetry">Whose loss is our eternal gain,</p>
<p class="poetry">For while he exercised all his powers</p>
<p class="poetry">Whatever he gained, the loss was ours.</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">love</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A
temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the
influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease, like <i>caries</i> and many other ailments, is
prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions;
barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from
its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">low-bred</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span> “Raised”
instead of brought up.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">luminary</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> One
who throws light upon a subject; as an editor by not writing about it.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">lunarian</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> An
inhabitant of the moon, as distinguished from Lunatic, one whom the moon
inhabits. The Lunarians have been described by Lucian, Locke and other
observers, but without much agreement. For example, Bragellos avers their
anatomical identity with Man, but Professor Newcomb says they are more like the
hill tribes of Vermont.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">lyre</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> An
ancient instrument of torture. The word is now used in a figurative sense to
denote the poetic faculty, as in the following fiery lines of our great poet,
Ella Wheeler Wilcox:</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">I sit astride Parnassus with my lyre,</p>
<p class="poetry">And pick with care the disobedient wire.</p>
<p class="poetry">That stupid shepherd lolling on his crook With deaf attention scarcely deigns to look. I
bide my time, and it shall come at length, When, with a Titan’s energy and
strength, I’ll grab a fistful of the strings, and O, The word shall suffer when
I let them go!</p>
<p class="citeauth">Farquharson Harris</p>
</div>


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